the Ottomans began enforcing a more central-
ized taxing system and curbed the power of the
tribes, first by military campaigns against them,
and when that failed, by settling Circassians from
the Caucasus region in tribal border areas such as
the largely abandoned town of Amman. Increased
security and the resulting upswing in regional
commerce brought new immigrants to towns
such as Irbid, Ajloun, Salt, and Karak. Syrian and
Palestinian merchants from Damascus, Nablus,
JerUsalem, and Hebron settled branches of their
families in the main Jordanian towns in order to
expand their commercial ties.
Jordan is often described as the most prepos-
terous of the newly mandated territories created
by the British and French after World War I. Its
jagged, straight-lined borders to the north, east,
and south do not correspond to any natural geo-
graphical boundaries and seem arbitrary lines in
the desert. In November 1920, Abd Allah, the
son of Sharif Husayn ibn Ali (d. 1931) of mecca,
encamped in Maan with an armed group of 300
fighters intending to march on Damascus to assist
in the defense of his brother Faysal’s independent
Arab kingdom declared in 1918. Instead, when
he arrived in Amman in March 1921, the Brit-
ish offered to sponsor him as the emir (Arabic:
amir, ruler) of Transjordan. Abd Allah accepted
and later became the first king in the hashimite
dynasty that still rules Jordan today. Over the
course of the 20th century, with the consolidation
and longevity of state power, a Jordanian national
identity has taken hold over a majority of the
population.
One factor that has led to the partial success
of national identity formation in Jordan is cultural
homogeneity. Almost the whole population is
Arab, with the exception of very small Circassian,
Chechen, Kurdish, and Armenian communities.
About 95 percent of Jordanians are Sunni Muslims
who follow the hanaFi legal school, although
this is changing. There are small groups of Alawis,
Twelve-Imam Shia, and drUze. About 5 percent of
Jordanians are Christians, mostly Greek Ortho-
dox. There are some Catholics, Maronites, and
Protestants. Historically, institutionalized religion
was weak in Jordan. At the beginning of the 19th
century, there was hardly any functioning mosque
or church of any significance in any town or vil-
lage. The spread of formal religious structures
began only during the 1920s with the establish-
ment of Hashemite rule. Since the 1950s, the
government has often allied itself with Islamist
political forces such as the mUslim brotherhood
in order to legitimize its authority. However,
autonomous Islamist politicians who have gone
against government policies have been severely
repressed.
Jordan suffers from cataclysmic destabilizing
events on its borders. It has been particularly
affected by Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although
King Abd Allah secretly negotiated with Zionist
leaders over the partition of palestine, Jorda-
nian troops led by a British commanding officer
fought in the Jerusalem area in the 1948 war in
Palestine. With the establishment of the state
of Israel, Jordan annexed the West Bank of
the Jordan River. By doing so, it immediately
acquired a majority-Palestinian population and
the largest number of the 750,000 to 800,000
Palestinians who either fled the fighting or were
forced from their homes. King Abd Allah was
assassinated by a Palestinian gunman on July 20,
1950, as he was entering the al-aqsa mosqUe in
Jerusalem for Friday prayers. In the 1967 Arab-
Israeli war, Israel occupied the West Bank, and
300,000 more Palestinian reFUgees fled to the
East Bank. Another 300,000 Palestinian refugees
suddenly arrived in Jordan in 1991 after they
were expelled from Kuwait at the end of the first
Gulf War. As of December 2006, 1,858,362 Pales-
tinians were officially registered with the United
Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) as
refugees in Jordan, and 328,076 of them lived in
10 refugee camps spread throughout the country.
Jordan has by far the largest number of the 4.4
million Palestinians recognized by the UNWRA
as refugees from 1948 and their descendants. ItK 406 Jordan